Attention Span Myth

"Humans have an attention span of 8 seconds which is less than that of a goldfish who is at 9 seconds"

Have you heard that before? Isn't this alarming?

You can listen to the audio version on the podcast episode from The Relearning Podcast

If you have made it so far in this article well then congratulations you are proof that attention spans are definitely more than 8 seconds.

Of course, you binge-watch your favorite web series and movies on Netflix, Hotstar, Prime, Youtube, etc., and listen to music, and podcasts like your favorite one – The Relearning Podcast plus our day-to-day tasks would be so troublesome if our attention spans were around 8 seconds eg. brushing teeth, cooking, reading, listening, working everything for that matter.

Did you know that goldfish also do not have a short memory, there are various studies on goldfish memory, attention, and learning.

"Basically?‘Attention span of a goldfish’ is an idiom that has been used over decades, internet used it for the first time in September 2000 as a figure of speech it should have stayed at that however like most things it has been used and misused as a fact since then."

Psychologists say that the idea of the average attention span itself is meaningless; how much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is. For example, driving needs attention on the road whereas listening to music or podcast while walking will not require undivided attention or making a choice between movies like Sooryavansham and Zindagi na milegi dobara oops that is a tough one for me I would probably watch both with similar interest and attention.

The challenge is organizations have designed strategies around short attention spans and make shorter and snackable content desperate to appeal to the consumers and employees, and the same users will watch a 4 hours long football match or entire foreign language series with subtitles.

"Shorter content surely works in most cases but it's not because of the attention spans it's simply because internet users today are tech-savvy with a variety of choices and they quickly decide whether to continue reading, watching, or listening to something or not."